March 2026 | Concrete

Jun 9

Written By MOSA

NOTE:This was originally published as part of my newsletter in March 2026. Subscribe to my newsletter to receive the next Om Letter direct to your inbox once a month.

For students, the first day at the Royal College of Art involves choosing a studio space. I landed myself between Soto (Greek) and Antonio (Swiss-Italian). Presumably because we’re all Europeans we skipped the small talk and instead spoke about why we had become visual communicators. Antonio only started speaking at age six. Before then visuals were his only means of communicating. Soto grew up unable to fully express who he is so visuals gave him a coded way of doing just that. Personally, I was raised between languages. As Fellini once said: “a different language is a different vision of life.” Sometimes these different visions of life failed to translate into one another so images became my preference.

I was recently reminded of one of these words that are lost in translation: ‘bodenständig.’ It’s a German word that literally translates to ‘floor-standing.’ Not so literally it refers to something that is concrete, something we know to be true, because it is so grounded in reality. The word implies that believability carries a kind of heft or weight to it.

Of course we live in a world where the truth, and trustworthy sources of information, are harder to come by and less easy to be certain of. Recently this has left me thinking about how we orient ourselves in the wider context of the world. How do we know right from wrong when we tune out external influences? What is our North Star?

My sense is that orientation is not only something we arrive at through thought, but something we feel our way into. Not a fixed point above us, but a quieter inner reference point. Not something that is true because it can be proven, but something that is true because it holds up when we lean into it.

In practice, this doesn’t feel like certainty. It feels more like a kind of listening to the mysterious background hum of bodily sensations and expressions. A willingness to pause with what is present within us, and to give our felt-sense time to arise, rather than reaching too quickly for an answer. The body doesn’t tell us what is right in any absolute sense. Instead, it offers a continual feedback loop of what feels comforting and coherent or, by contrast, what makes us tense, what feels off, what asks for more attention.

There is humility in recognising that we are not always clear, and there is a feeling of potential in not being fully resolved within ourselves. That our sense of direction may shift as we do. But there is also a quiet reliability in returning, again and again, to something that can be felt rather than asserted.

Not a fixed North Star then, but a continuous inner re-orientation. One that happens in small adjustments - in moments of pause, when we consciously feel our feet against the ground, when we soften our attention, or choose to remain a little longer with a feeling that we might otherwise brush off. Less knowing, and more staying in relationship with ourselves, with others, and with the world as it unfolds. More ‘Bodenständigkeit.’

With love,

OM x